The Score

It had been expedient, when the Labor Government was frittering away the U.S. loan, to minimize Sir Stafford Cripps's cries of trouble ahead by calling him Cassandra. But Sir Stafford had known the score all along, and in the gloom of crisis last week, it was Cassandra who had to stand up and announce the score to the British people. It was a grim score.

His audience was some 2,000 industrialists, businessmen, union and government officials in London's Central Hall. Murmured a businessman, as the president of Britain's Board of Trade tripped to the rostrum: "There he comes, so quietly."

Quietly Sir Stafford outlined the bleakest prospect yet conceded by a Labor Minister--a revolution in Britain's internal economy. In cold figures and concrete decisions, he laid down a program for 152 British industries: "Export or die."

Destitution, he said in effect, is just around the corner. Austerity? Britons do not yet know what austerity is. Britain's standard of living is falling--and it will fall a lot more. Britain's industries must do without vitally needed new machinery --but they must produce more than ever. Britain's people must do without nearly everything they make at home so that it can be sold abroad. Again & again, Sir Stafford warned industry's owners and managers that if they do not do what they are told, the Government will make them do it. British workers must stop slacking on the job. If workers are lacking in basic industry, labor conscription, though the Labor Government shrinks from the thought, will have to come.

Promptly, a Liberal Party statement cried "Totalitarian." Said the London Daily Mail: "A real snorter. . . " Revolutionary. . . ." Said a Manchester Guardian headline: "TOIL AND SWEAT--BUT NO GLORY."

Last week some 40,000 coal miners at Grimethorpe and other Yorkshire mines, who have doggedly resisted Government attempts to get them back to work, agreed to dig coal again. Their 35-day strike had cost Britain some 570,000 tons of coal.

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